THE LA RAZA CRIME TIDAL WAVE - “These figures do not attempt to allege that foreign
nationals in the country illegally commit more
crimes than other groups,” the report states. “It
simply identifies thousands of crimes that should
not have occurred and thousands of victims that
should not have been victimized because the
perpetrator should not be here.”
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) says President Trump’s merit-based legal immigration plan is a “step in the right direction” to stopping downward wage pressure and cheaper foreign competition against America’s blue collar and working class.

In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Cotton said Trump’s newly unveiled immigration plan which gives priority to English-speaking, highly skilled, and highly educated foreign nationals is moving the country towards a national immigration policy that puts Americans first.

“We’re reserving final judgment until I see an actual bill of course. I would say it’s a step in the right direction for the way we approach our legal immigration system,” Cotton said:

It’s modeled in large part on the RAISE Act, which I introduced two years ago which would reorient our legal immigration system toward younger, higher skilled workers who speak English who could contribute to our economy from the very beginning on their first day here without hurting blue collar wages. I think that’s a step in the right direction. [Emphasis added]

“As far as the asylum crisis goes, it addresses a lot of the problems at the border that have resulted from well-intentioned laws that are now being abused by people seeking asylum for fraudulent or bogus reasons — oftentimes aided by American groups that are giving them talking points they need to get across our border — as well as providing the physical infrastructure that the border patrol needs to address the crisis at our southern border,” Cotton said. “So I want to see the final bill, of course, but it’s a step in the right direction for sure.”

Indeed, while Trump’s plan would implement mandatory E-Verify as well as a rigorous assimilation process that each foreign national would have to pass in order to obtain permanent residence, the plan fails to reduce the overall level of legal immigration at least on paper.

Cotton’s RAISE Act, on the other hand, boosts Americans’ wages and job prospects by reducing the flow of legal immigration from its current rate of 1.2 million admissions a year to 500,000 admissions a year. Senators David Perdue (R-GA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) are both co-sponsors of the RAISE Act.

Both Trump’s plan and the RAISE Act, though, end the process known as “chain migration,” where newly naturalized citizens are allowed to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S.

Chain migration has been used to import entire foreign villages to the U.S., as noted by the New York Times. Since 2005, 9.3 million foreign nationals have been able to resettle in the U.S. through chain migration. This huge inflow outpaces two years of American births, which amounts to roughly four million babies every year.

The number of extended-family foreign nationals who have resettled in the U.S. in the last decade is greater than the total combined population of Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and Cleveland.

At current legal immigration levels, the U.S. is on track to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters in the next two decades — the vast majority of which are likely to vote for Democrats, research by Axios, the New York Times, and Ronald Brownstein has revealed. Those 15 million new foreign-born voters include about eight million who will arrive in the country through chain migration.

The reduction of legal immigration levels would almost certainly not only boost wages for America’s working and middle class at a quicker pace than current trends, but also relieve labor market pressure, ensuring that U.S. workers are not forced to compete a never-ending flow of cheaper, foreign workers.

Research indicates that for every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are cut by about 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent since 17.5 percent of the workforce is foreign born.

Every year, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals, with more than 70 percent arriving through chain migration. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

AMERICA: THE RICH GET MUCH RICHER AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS BLUDGEONED…. Illegals get the jobs!

*

Why do the billionaire class all want wider open borders and hordes more “cheap” labor illegals? It’s all about keeping wages depressed for greater profits!

*

“Today’s society benefits those who shaped it, and it has been shaped not by working men and women, but by the new aristocratic elite. Big banks, big tech, big multi-national corporations, along with their allies in the academy and the media—these are the aristocrats of our age. They live in the United States, but they consider themselves citizens of the world” Sen. Josh Hawley

"This is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of

our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human

traffickers. These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY

*

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT

*

"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now." ---- Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com

*

“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service”into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes."

*

"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the super-rich, on top of the fact that virtually all income gains during the period of the supposed recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1 percent income bracket."

*

Graph from the Economic Policy Institute

Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.

*

Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

By Gabriel Black

*

The massive increase in the value of the stock market, which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that the top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America combined last year.

WSJ: Immigration to U.S. Drives ‘Highest Level’ of Foreign Workers Since 1996

The constant flow of legal immigration to the United States — with 1.2 million nationals admitted every year — has driven the “highest level in decades” of foreign-born workers in the American economy, the Wall Street Journalreports.

Foreign-born workers now make up 17.5 percent of the total U.S. workforce, according to the most recent Department of Labor data. This means that about 3-in-17 workers in the American economy were born outside of the U.S., an increase 0.4 percent since last year, when 17.1 percent of all workers were foreign born.

(Screenshot via the Wall Street Journal)

Legal immigration levels, where 1.2 million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of foreign visa workers are admitted to the country annually, have driven the number of foreign born workers in the U.S. to its highest level since 1996, the Wall Street Journal notes:

There were 27.2 million U.S. workers who were born outside the country last year, up 3.7% from a year earlier. That was an acceleration from 1.8% growth in 2017, and the fastest rate of foreign-born employment growth since 2012. [Emphasis added]

…

“The top overall reason for people to come to the United States is for employment,” said Jeanne Batalova, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. [Emphasis added]

Foreign-born workers who are Hispanic represent the “largest portion of the foreign-born labor force,” the Wall Street Journal reported, with about 47.7 percent of foreign born workers being Hispanic. Asian foreign born workers represent more than 25 percent of the foreign born labor force.

The data also reveals that compared to native born American workers, foreign-born workers are being increasingly hired by businesses and enjoying less unemployment. This is largely because foreign-born workers are cheaper to hire than native-born Americans, as revealed by Labor Department data.

For example, the average unemployment rate for foreign-born workers was 3.5 percent last year. Compare that to an average unemployment rate of four percent for native-born American workers, as well as the fact that foreign-born workers earn less than native born Americans.

(Screenshot via the Wall Street Journal)

In 2018, foreign-born workers were cheaper to hire for employers, earning a median weekly salary of less than $760. At the same time, native- born American workers’ median weekly salary was $910. The data, though, found that while native-born Americans’ wages have been largely stagnant, foreign-born workers have seen their wages rise.

Though there continue to be nearly 12 million Americans who want a full-time job but are unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labor force entirely, the U.S. has continued admitting more than a million legal immigrants a year to compete for working and middle class jobs against these sidelined. Americans.

Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.

For every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are cut by about 0.5 percent, Camarota finds. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent since 17.5 percent of the workforce is foreign born.

In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by about 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.

Likewise, every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.

At current legal immigration rates, about one-in-six U.S. residents will have been born outside of the country by 2060, the Census Bureau has found. The foreign-born population in the U.S. is expected to reach 69 million in the next four decades.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

MCALLEN, Texas – The record-setting waves of migrants flowing into the Rio Grande Valley Sector forced U.S. Border Patrol agents to build tents outside of their stations for temporary housing. Some migrants were also held in parking lots. The new measures come after a newly built tent facility nearby already reached its maximum capacity.

According to information released by U.S. Border Patrol, agents in McAllen are currently holding an average of 8,000 migrants. The average number of apprehensions each day varies from 1,000 to 1,500 migrants in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. A series of photographs released by the agency revealed the crowding at the facilities as agents try to keep up with the growing number of migrants.

As a response to the growing number of migrants, agents erected four tent buildings. In the processing centers and tents, migrants receive new clothing, shoes, food, and medical care. The agency is reporting at least 20 visits a day to local hospitals to treat more serious issues.

“The longer illegal aliens remain in custody, the harder it can become to sustain our operations but housing the migrants in these tents is the default solution,” said Chief Patrol Agent Rodolfo Karisch. “This is the reality of what happens when we simply cannot handle the influx of migrants arriving. We are doing all we can to ensure a safe environment for all involved, but it is crystal clear that we have a real emergency on the border; this is not sustainable.”

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Border / Cartel Chronicles. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.

Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Border / Cartel Chronicles. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.

A new proposed rule that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued earlier this week to enforce existing law requiring those who receive public housing to be U.S. citizens gained the ire of Democrats, including Barack Obama’s former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

Solis, who is now on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, tweeted on Thursday support for 12 House members who sent a letter to HUD Secretary Ben Carson. The letter demands that the rule requiring everyone living in public houses to be in the country legally be revoked because some of those who could be affected are U.S. citizen children with illegal parents.

“Thank you @RepBarragan, @RepMaxineWaters, and other MoC for speaking out against @HUDgov’s proposal to evict families with an undocumented relative in the home. Yesterday, the #BOS approved my co-authored motion with @SheilaKuehl to send a letter against this unjust action,” Solis tweeted.

Thank you @RepBarragan, @RepMaxineWaters, and other MoC for speaking out against @HUDgov's proposal to evict families with an undocumented relative in the home. Yesterday, the #BOS approved my co-authored motion with @SheilaKuehl to send a letter against this unjust action.

“The proposed rule is an unconscionable ploy by the administration to carry out its anti-immigrant agenda at the expense of thousands of families,” said Rep Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-CA). “Instead of addressing the homelessness problem in Los Angeles and across the country, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is admittingly attempting to put thousands of families, many with children who are U.S. citizens, onto the streets. I’m proud to lead Members of the Los Angeles Congressional delegation in speaking out and fighting against this cruel proposal.”

The letter reveals how many illegal aliens are living in public housing in just the Los Angeles area.

“An estimated 22 percent of all HACLA [Housing Authority for the City of Los Angeles]-assisted households, and 31 percent of the total population in HACLA’s public housing programs, will be negatively impacted by the proposed rule,” the letter states. “Further, with nearly one in three public housing residents impacted by the rule, the economic consequences for HACLA will be immense.”

“There is an affordable housing crisis in this country, and we need to make certain our scarce public resources help those who are legally entitled to it,” Carson said. “Given the overwhelming demand for our programs, fairness requires that we devote ourselves to legal residents who have been waiting, some for many years, for access to affordable housing.”

The regulation, posted on the Federal Register, states, in part, about how the Act would be amended:

The proposed rule would require the verification of the eligible immigration status of all recipients of assistance under a covered program who are under the age of 62. As a result, the proposed rule would make prorated assistance a temporary condition pending verification of eligible status, as opposed to under the current regulation where it could continue indefinitely.

The proposed rule would also specify that individuals who are not ineligible immigration status may not serve as the leaseholder, even as part of a mixed family whose assistance is prorated based on the percentage of members with eligible status.

HUD believes the amendments will bring its regulations into greater alignment with the wording and purpose of Section 214.

HUD provided Breitbart News with some of the statistics on how many Americans in cities across the United States are in need of housing assistance, including 1.6 million waiting for public housing and 2.6 million who are in line for housing choice vouchers:

• Only 1 in 4 qualified households currently receive housing assistance in this country. That means, 3 out of 4 families who might otherwise qualify for our programs do not get any help to pay their rent whatsoever.

• If current recipients are representative of those waiting for HUD assistance, most are extremely poor seniors or persons living with a disability.

• In some states, public housing waitlists are closed, and local public housing agencies are not even accepting new applicants.

Hundreds of thousands of people are waiting in cities like Los Angeles and New York City, according to a HUD survey.

California
Has Become America's Cannibal State

For over
six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent,
the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million
people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax.

The state
legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary
fix and would eventually be phased out. No one believed that. California
voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved
the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin.

California
recently raised gas taxes by 40 percent and now has the second-highest gas
taxes in the United States.

California
has the ninth-highest combined state and local sales taxes in the country, but
its state sales tax of 7.3 percent is America's highest. As of April 1,
California is now applying that high state sales tax to goods that residents
buy online from out-of-state sellers.

In late
2017, the federal government capped state and local tax deductions at $10,000.
For high earners in California, the change effectively almost doubled their
state and local taxes.

Such high
taxes, often targeting a small percentage of the population, may have brought
California a budget surplus of more than $20 million. Yet California is never
satiated with high new tax rates that bring in additional revenue. It's always
hungry for more.

Scott
Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco, has introduced a bill
that would create a new California estate tax. Wiener outlined a death tax of
40 percent on estates worth more than $3.5 million for single Californians or
more than $7 million for married couples.

Given the
soaring valuations of California properties, a new estate tax could force
children to sell homes or family farms they inherited just to pay the tax
bills.

Soon,
even more of the Californian taxpayers who chip in to pay half of the state
income taxes will flee in droves for low-tax or no-tax states.

What really
irks California taxpayers are the shoddy public services that they receive in
exchange for such burdensome taxes. California can be found near the bottom of
state rankings for schools and infrastructure.

San
Francisco ranks first among America's largest cities in property crimes per
capita. The massive concrete ruins of the state's quarter-built and now either
canceled or postponed multibillion-dollar high-speed rail system are already
collecting graffiti.

Roughly a
quarter of the nation's homeless live in California. So do about one-third of
all Americans on public assistance. Approximately one-fifth of the state's
population lives below the poverty line. About one-third of Californians are
enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state's health care program for low-income residents.

California's
social programs are magnets that draw in the indigent from all over the world,
who arrive in search of generous health, education, legal, nutritional and
housing subsidies. Some 27 percent of the state's residents were not born in
the United States.

Last
month alone, nearly 100,000 foreign nationals were stopped at the southern
border, according to officials. Huge numbers of migrants are able to make it
across without being caught, and many end up in California.

A lot of
upper-middle-class taxpayers feel that not only does California fail to
appreciate their contributions, but that the state often blames them for not
paying even more -- as if paying about half of their incomes to local, state
and federal governments somehow reveals their greed.

The
hyper-wealthy liberal denizens of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the coastal
enclaves often seem exempt from the consequences of the high taxes they so
often advocate for others. The super-rich either have the clout to hire experts
to help them avoid such taxes, or they simply have so much money that they are
not much affected by even California's high taxes.

What is
the ideology behind such destructive state policies?

Venezuela,
which is driving out its middle class, is apparently California's model.
Venezuelan leaders believed in providing vast subsidies for the poor. The
country's super-rich are often crony capitalists who can avoid high taxes.

Similarly,
California is waging an outright war on the upper-middle class, which lacks the
numbers of the poor and the clout of the rich.

Those who
administer California's plagued department of motor vehicles and high-speed
rail authority may often be inept and dysfunctional, but the state's tax
collectors are the most obsessive bureaucrats in the nation.

What is
Sacramento's message to those who combine to pay half the state's income taxes
and have not yet left California?

"Be
gone or we will eat you!"

Watch the illegal immigrant 'conveyor belt' - in action

Here in San Diego, a demonstration of it
in action was posted by the San Diego office of the U.S. Border Patrol on
Twitter, which was then all over the local news, and then
picked up by the Daily Mail.

Video
captured 3/14 shows an illegal crossing of Central American migrants. None of
the 52 people surrendered to the #USBP agent on the beach. All 52 people were eventually arrested after a 2 hour
foot chase with multiple agents. Once in custody, everyone claimed asylum. #CBP

Some 50-plus illegal immigrants
traveling in family units slipped through one of the openings in the junk
fences delineating the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, and then, in two
groups, ran in procession to the U.S. Border Patrol vehicle waiting for
them on the beach at Imperial Beach to promptly claim asylum.

A total of 52
people were arrested for crossing the border illegally and CBP said it did not
appear anyone got away. This includes 23 males, ages 18 to 53, 12 females,
ages 21 to 50, and 17 juveniles, ages 1 to 14.

Video captured
at the scene, where the wall was cut and people got through, credited to
“Mexican Andy.”

It was all so very orderly, actually.
Border chaos? Not in the least. There's border order all right, but it's
cartels who control the order. They already are the ones who take the fees
(or promises of free labor or drug transport) from the illegal migrants and
anyone who doesn't pay doesn't cross. Cartels not only sell access, they
provide a package deal - with the legal instruction, Mexico-based bus service
from Central America to the border, and the U.S. bus service to the U.S.
workplaces, all for a tidy profit, made even more profitable as economies of
scale kick in. As Rick Moran noted in his blog post yesterday, the conveyor
belt has enabled the cartels to 'drastically
lower their overhead costs while maximizing profit.'

Which is why the U.S. is on track to
apprehend a million illegal immigrants - a figure which doesn't count those who
get in without getting caught. Those conveyor-belt economies of scale produce
numbers.

The border crossing seen here, with all
of the illegal migrants lining up for their phony asylum claims, appears to be
a good representation of the dynamic described in the Washington Post's investigative
piece about these 'conveyor belts' that ran two days
ago.

It shows how the U.S. has lost control,
given that the Border Patrol is powerless to send these illegal crossers back.

Border Patrol agents are supposed to
determine who gets into the U.S., but with this video, it's
obvious they are just reduced to being handmaidens and enablers of
the cartel and its conveyor belt, handing the lined up illegals their asylum
claim papers. Cartels are the ones who school these migrants for entry into the
U.S., teaching them how to immediately launch claims for asylum whether they
merit it or not, and then board the bus waiting for them for the jobs awaiting
them with those de facto if
temporary legalization papers the asylum claim gives them. The Border
Patrol has been reduced to being their instrument.

Democrats who claim to be against
walls and borders show just how disingenuous their claims really are. Walls and
borders will always be there, but the real question is whether they
want cartels to control the access, as they are in this conveyor-belt video, or
U.S. Border Patrol agents.

I'm no big fan of the big
state but I sure as heck don't want vile money-grubbing Mexican cartels
replacing it. The conveyor belt shows that it's actually an either-or
proposition.

The sanctuary state of California refused 5,600 requests by federal
immigration officials over two years to turn over criminal illegal aliens,
state data finds.

In
an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Immigration Reform Law
Institute (IRLI) Executive Director Dale Wilcox revealed that within a 27-month
period, the state of California had failed to honor about 5,600 Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers which are the holds ICE agents file to
local jails and police to request that an illegal alien be turned over to them
for arrest and deportation.

Of
these 5,600 failed ICE detainers, more than 3,400 were lodged against an
illegal alien who had been classified “level 1” and “level 2” offenders —
meaning that these illegal aliens had been charged with crimes like homicide,
kidnapping, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, drugs, and fraud.

“The
bottom line is, sanctuary cities are neither humane or compassionate,” Wilcox
told Breitbart News Tonight.
“They’re dangerous policies that cost Americans lives … what will it take for
these anti-borders politicians to wake up and put the safety and security of
their citizens, their legal residents before the interests of criminal aliens.”

About
250 of the ICE detainers not honored had been filed to Napa County and Sonoma
County law enforcement officials. These two California counties had sanctuary
city policies before the state’s statewide sanctuary policy.

The
5,600 failed requests by ICE to have criminal illegal aliens turned over to
them came before California enacted their statewide sanctuary policy, where all
local jails and counties are prohibited from cooperating with federal
immigration officials.

IRLI
researchers said records after the passage of California’s sanctuary state
policy are likely to show an increased number of cases where local jails and
law enforcement officials refused to turn criminal illegal aliens over to ICE.

In
a specific case, most recently, Wilcox noted that Napa County, California
deputy Riley Jarecki was nearly killed by
three-time deported illegal alien Javier Hernandez-Morales during a traffic
stop after local officials refused to turn him over to ICE agents for
deportation.

“Its
own deputy almost got killed as a result of its refusal to honor ICE detainer
requests,” Wilcox said. “And this individual had been deported three times in
the past … so they say there’s no need emergency or need for a wall, this
criminal alien is just walking back into the country.”

ICE
had requested four separate times that Hernandez-Morales be turned over to them
to be arrested and deported back to Mexico. Three of the detainers were placed
with the Napa Couty Sheriff’s Department and one was placed with the Sonoma
County Sheriff’s Department. None of the ICE detainers were honored.

Wilcox
said Americans’ lives are being put at risk in sanctuary cities and sanctuary
states like California, all so that Democrats are able to import potential voters.

“With
the Democrats, it’s about potential, future voters,” Wilcox said. “They have an
interest in bringing in new voters so that they can win elections. That’s what
that’s all about. I mean, 10 years ago, Democrats weren’t out preaching
sanctuary cities and open borders, that just wasn’t their party platform.
They’ve swallowed this belief that if you want to stay in power, if you want to
win future elections, more voters and diverse voters is the way to go.”

“Sanctuary
cities are dangerous. They’re not humane, they’re not compassionate,” Wilcox
continued. “People are dying. It’s senseless and avoidable deaths. There’s no
excuse for politicians to sell out their constituency for potential, future
voters.”

Listen
to Wilcox’s full interview here:

California's
Rendezvous With Reality

Californians brag that their state is the world's fifth-largest economy.
They talk as reverentially of Silicon Valley companies Apple, Facebook and
Google as the ancient Greeks did of their Olympian gods.

Hollywood and universities such as Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley are
cited as permanent proof of the intellectual, aesthetic and technological
dominance of West Coast culture.

Californians also see their progressive, one-party state as a
neo-socialist model for a nation moving hard to the left.

But how long will they retain such confidence?

California's 40 million residents depend on less than one-percent of the
state's taxpayers to pay nearly half of the state income tax, which for
California's highest tier of earners tops out at the nation's highest rate of
13.3 percent.

In other words, California cannot afford to lose even a few thousand of
its wealthiest individual taxpayers. But a new federal tax law now caps
deductions for state and local taxes at $10,000 -- a radical change that
promises to cost many high-earning taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

If even a few thousand of the state's one-percent flee to nearby no-tax
states such as Nevada or Texas, California could face a devastating shortfall
in annual income.

During the 2011-16 California drought, politicians and experts claimed
that global warming had permanently altered the climate, and that snow and rain
would become increasingly rare in California. As a result, long-planned
low-elevation reservoirs, designed to store water during exceptionally wet
years, were considered all but useless and thus were never built.

Then, in 2016 and 2017, California received record snow and rainfall --
and the windfall of millions of acre-feet of runoff was mostly let out to sea.
Nothing since has been learned.

California has again been experiencing rain and cold that could approach
seasonal records. The state has been soaked by some 18 trillion gallons of rain
in February alone. With still no effort to expand California's water-storage
capacity, millions of acre-feet of runoff are once again cascading out to sea
(and may be sorely missed next year).

The inability to build reservoirs is especially tragic given that the
state's high-speed-rail project has gobbled up more than $5 billion in funds
without a single foot of track laid. The total cost soared from an original $40
billion promise to a projected $77 billion. To his credit, newly elected Gov.
Gavin Newsom, fearing a budget catastrophe, canceled the statewide project
while allowing a few miles of the quarter-built Central Valley "track to
nowhere" to be finished.

For years, high-speed rail has drained the state budget of transportation
funds that might have easily updated nightmarish stretches of the Central
Valley's Highway 99, or ensured that the nearby ossified Amtrak line became a
modern two-track line.

California
politicians vie with each other to prove their open-borders bona fides in an
effort to appeal to the estimated 27 percent of Californians who were not born
in the United States.

But
the health, educational and legal costs associated with massive illegal
immigration are squeezing the budget. About a third of the California budget
goes to the state's Medicare program, Medi-Cal. Half the state's births are
funded by Medi-Cal, and in nearly a third of those state-funded births, the
mother is an undocumented immigrant.

California is facing a perfect storm of
homelessness. Its labyrinth of zoning and building regulations discourages
low-cost housing. Its generous welfare benefits, non-enforcement of vagrancy
and public health laws, and moderate climate draw in the homeless. Nearly
one-third of the nation's welfare recipients live in the state, and nearly one
in five live below the poverty line.

The result is that tens of thousands of
people live on the streets and sidewalks of the state's major cities, where
primeval diseases such as typhus have reappeared.

California's progressive government seems
clueless how to deal with these issues, given that solutions such as low-cost
housing and strict enforcement of health codes are seen as either too expensive
or politically incorrect.

In sum, California has no margin for error.

Spiraling entitlements, unwieldy pension costs, money wasted on high-speed
rail, inadequate water storage and delivery, and lax immigration policies were
formerly tolerable only because about 150,000 Californians paid huge but
federally deductible state income taxes.

No more. Californians may have once derided the state's one-percent as
selfish rich people. Now, they are praying that these heavily burdened
taxpayers stay put and are willing to pay far more than what they had paid
before.

That is the only way California can continue to spend money on projects
that have not led to safe roads, plentiful water, good schools and safe
streets.

The
Four States of the Apocalypse

"This is the flip side (of) tax the rich, tax the
rich, tax the rich. The rich leave, and now what do you do?" said New York
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on Feb. 4.

After the Trump tax cut went into effect one year ago, we
predicted that the Trump tax reform would supercharge the national economy but
could cause big financial problems for the five highest-tax states: California,
Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York.

The capping of the state and local tax deduction at
$10,000 raised the highest effective state tax rates by about 66 percent (for
example, in New York City and California, the rate on millionaires rose from
about 8 percent to 13.3 percent). In New Jersey, the highest rate has risen
from 7.5 percent to 12.75 percent. Now, we have Andrew Cuomo conceding that the
trend of rich people moving out of New York has caused the loss of $2.3 billion
of tax revenue in Albany's coffers. Cuomo called this tax change
"diabolical." We think it was a matter of tax fairness. No longer do
residents of low-tax states have to pay higher federal taxes to support the
blob of excessive state/local spending and pensions in the blue states.

As we predicted, the wealthy are fleeing these five
states. The new United Van Lines data were just released that are a good proxy
for where Americans are moving to and from. Guess what four states had the
highest percentage of leavers in 2018: 1) New Jersey, 2) Illinois, 3)
Connecticut and 4) New York. Even California had more Americans pack up and
leave than enter.

Ironically, liberals like Cuomo who argued for years that
businesses don't make location decisions based on taxes in their states are now
forced to admit that the cap on the state and local tax deduction (which
primarily affects the richest 1 percent) is depleting their state coffers. The
rich change their residence by moving for at least 183 days of the year to low
taxers such as Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

We advised Cuomo and other blue state governors to
immediately cut their tax rates if they wanted to remain even semi-competitive
with low-tax states. They are doing the opposite. Connecticut, Illinois and New
Jersey have led the nation in tax increases on the rich over the last three
years, while "progressives" have cheered them on.

Last year, legislators in Trenton went on a taxing spree,
raising the income tax on those making more than $5 million a year to 10.75
percent -- now the third-highest in the country -- and then enacting a health
care individual mandate tax on workers, a corporate rate increase and an option
for localities to impose a payroll tax on businesses. And they are still short
of cash. Idiotically, these tax hikes were passed after the cap on state and
local tax deductions was enacted, thus pouring gasoline on their fiscal fires.

How has this worked out for them?

In addition to New York's fiscal woes, the deficit in
Illinois is pegged at $2.8 billion (with a $7.8 billion backlog of unpaid
bills), and Connecticut faces a two-year $4 billion shortfall despite three tax
increases in five years. New Jersey has a $500 million deficit this year (even
after the biggest tax hike in the state's history) and Moody's predicts that
gap will widen to $3 billion over the next five years. This is all happening at
a time when most states have healthy and unexpected surplus revenues due to the
Trump economic boom and the historic decline in unemployment.

A Pew study published late last year on which states are
bleeding the most red ink ranked New Jersey worst, Illinois second worst and
Connecticut seventh worst. New York was also in the bottom 10.

Let us state this loud and clear in the hopes that
lawmakers in state capitals across the country are paying attention: The three
states that have raised their taxes the most now have the worst fiscal outlook.

Worst of all, things don't look like they are going to
get better in any of these states. Last fall, Connecticut, Illinois and New
Jersey voters elected mega-rich Democratic Govs. Ned Lamont, J.B. Pritzker and
Phil Murphy, who have promised to sock it to the rich -- the ones who haven't
yet left. In Illinois, Pritzker would eliminate the state's constitutionally
protected flat tax so that he can raise the income tax on the rich by as much
as 50 percent. After raising income taxes three times in the last five years,
Connecticut's legislature now wants to raise the sales tax rate. No one in any
of these progressive states even dares utter the words tax cut. In just one
decade, New York lost 1.3 million net residents; Illinois 717,000, New Jersey
516,000 and Connecticut 176,000. California has lost 929,000.

There is also a useful warning for the soak-the-rich
crowd of progressives in Washington. If a rise in the state tax rate from 8
percent to 13 percent can have this big and immediate negative impact, think of
the economic carnage from doubling of the federal tax rate from 37 percent to
70 percent as some want to do. The wealthy would relocate their wealth and
income in low-tax havens like Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands and Ireland. That
would do wonders for the middle class living in those countries.

We are sticking with our warnings from last year. If the
four states of the Apocalypse -- Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York
-- do not reverse their taxing ways and choose to keep making things worse,
these once very rich and prosperous states will see thousands more rich
taxpayers leave. The politicians in these four states just don't seem to
understand math. A soak-the-rich tax rate of 8 percent, 10 percent or even 13
percent on income of zero yields zero income when the wealthy leave the state.
Cuomo was right: The bleak outlook for the four states of apocalypse is
"as serious as a heart attack."

California—not
Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia—has the highest poverty rate in the
United States. According to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty
Measure—which accounts for the cost of housing, food, utilities, and clothing,
and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income—nearly one
out of four Californians is poor. Given robust job growth in the state and the prosperity
generated by several industries, especially the supercharged tech sector, the
question arises as to why California has so many poor people, especially when
the state’s per-capita GDP increased roughly twice as much as the U.S. average
over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5 percent, compared with 6.27 percent).

It’s not
as if California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty. Sacramento
and local governments have spent massive amounts in the cause, for decades now.
Myriad state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some
cases, individuals with incomes 200 percent above the poverty line receive
benefits, according to the California Policy Center. California state and local
governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare
programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and “other
public welfare,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Unfortunately,
California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly
one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients. The generous spending, then,
has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it
worse.

In the
late 1980s and early 1990s, some states—principally Wisconsin, Michigan, and
Virginia—initiated welfare reform, as did the federal government under
President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress. The common thread of the
reformed welfare programs was strong work requirements placed on aid
recipients. These overhauls were widely recognized as a big success, as welfare
rolls plummeted and millions of former aid recipients entered the workforce.
The state and local bureaucracies that implement California’s antipoverty
programs, however, have resisted pro-work reforms. In fact, California recipients
of state aid receive a disproportionately large share of it in
no-strings-attached cash disbursements. It’s as if welfare reform passed
California by, leaving a dependency trap in place. Immigrants are falling into
it: 55 percent of immigrant families in the state get some kind of means-tested
benefits, compared with just 30 percent of natives, according to City Journal contributing editor Kay S. Hymowitz.

Self-interest
in the social-services community may be at work here. If California’s poverty
rate should ever be substantially reduced by getting the typical welfare client
back into the workforce, many bureaucrats could lose their jobs. As economist
William A. Niskanen explained back in 1971, public agencies seek to maximize
their budgets, through which they acquire increased power, status, comfort, and
job security. In order to keep growing its budget, and hence its power, a
welfare bureaucracy has an incentive to expand its “customer” base—to ensure
that the welfare rolls remain full and, ideally, growing. With 883,000
full-time-equivalent state and local employees in 2014, according to Governing, California has an enormous bureaucracy—a unionized,
public-sector workforce that exercises tremendous power through voting and
lobbying. Many work in social services.

Further
contributing to the poverty problem is California’s housing crisis.
Californians spent more than one-third of their incomes on housing in 2014, the
third-highest rate in the country. A shortage of housing has driven prices ever
higher, far above income increases. And that shortage is a direct outgrowth of
misguided policies. “Counties and local governments have imposed restrictive
land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings,” explains
analyst Wendell Cox. “Middle income households have been forced to accept lower
standards of living while the less fortunate have been driven into poverty by
the high cost of housing.” The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),
passed in 1971, is one example; it can add $1 million to the cost of completing
a housing development, says Todd Williams, an Oakland attorney who chairs the
Wendel Rosen Black & Dean land-use group. CEQA costs have been known to
shut down entire home-building projects. CEQA reform would help increase housing
supply, but there’s no real movement to change the law.

Extensive
environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon-dioxide emissions make
energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. On some estimates, California
energy costs are as much as 50 percent higher than the national average.
Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics, author of a 2015 Manhattan
Institute study, “Less Carbon, Higher Prices,” found that “in 2012, nearly 1
million California households faced ‘energy poverty’—defined as energy
expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California
counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all
households.” A Pacific Research Institute study by Wayne Winegarden found that
the rate could exceed 17 percent of median income in some areas. “The impacts
on the poorest households are not only the largest,” states Winegarden. “They
are clearly unaffordable.”

Looking
to help poor and low-income residents, California lawmakers recently passed a
measure raising the minimum wage from $10 an hour to $15 an hour by 2022—but a
higher minimum wage will do nothing for the 60 percent of Californians who live
in poverty and don’t have jobs, and studies suggest that it will likely cause
many who do have jobs to lose them. A Harvard study found evidence that “higher
minimum wages increase overall exit rates for restaurants” in the Bay Area,
where more than a dozen cities and counties, including San Francisco, have
changed their minimum-wage ordinances in the last five years. “Estimates
suggest that a one-dollar increase in the minimum wage leads to a 14 percent
increase in the likelihood of exit for a 3.5-star restaurant (which is the
median rating),” the report says. These restaurants are a significant source of
employment for low-skilled and entry-level workers.

Apparently
content with futile poverty policies, Sacramento lawmakers can turn their
attention to what historian Victor Davis Hanson aptly describes as a fixation
on “remaking the world.” The political class wants to build a costly and
needless high-speed rail system; talks of secession from a United States
presided over by Donald Trump; hired former attorney general Eric Holder to
“resist” Trump’s agenda; enacted the first state-level cap-and-trade regime; established
California as a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants; banned plastic bags,
threatening the jobs of thousands of workers involved in their manufacture; and
is consumed by its dedication to “California values.” All this only reinforces
the rest of America’s perception of an out-of-touch Left Coast, to the
disservice of millions of Californians whose values are more traditional,
including many of the state’s poor residents.

California’s
de facto status as a one-party state lies at the heart of its poverty problem.
With a permanent majority in the state senate and the assembly, a prolonged
dominance in the executive branch, and a weak opposition, California Democrats
have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no
political price. The state’s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while
policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of economic prosperity
that drove California to its golden years.

Kerry Jackson is the Pacific Research Institute’s fellow in
California studie

ADD CHAIN MIGRATION
WHEREBY THE ILLEGALS GET TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY AND THEN DO THE
MATH!

Ready for the next 5
million illegals getting ready to enter the U.S. in 2019?

Gallup put out a poll last
week, finding that five million Latin Americans plan to cross into the U.S.
this year alone. And the total number who plan to enter the U.S., either this
year, or later, is 42 million. The U.S. admits a million legal
immigrants each year from all countries. This new survey
shows that at least four million of that five million are
planning to enter illegally, most likely by crossing the border. That's a human
tide.

And the case for President
Trump declaring an emergency and building a wall instead of bargaining with an
unwilling Congress convinced there's no crisis has just gotten that much
stronger.

Of
those who want to leave their Latin American country permanently, 35% said they want to go to the
United States.

The Gallup analytics estimate is that 42
million want to come to the U.S.

That is one hell of a big
number, particularly since much of the data suggest that the U.S. already
houses some 30 million illegal immigrants. Four or five million more will
increase the illegal population by 12% to 17% in just one year, something that
will make assimilation for migrants already here in migrant enclaves that
much harder. Migrant enclaves already are at the top of the U.S. lists for
bad places to live - 10 of the 50 worst places in America to live
according to this list are
in California, and all of them are famous for their illegal populations. The
newcomers will need social services, given that most will not have the
requisite language, education or skills to succeed here. Many will be
unwed mothers, which ensures even here that they will be assimilating into
the underclass. The cost to taxpayers to feed, house, educate, medically
treat and jail the newcomers will run into billions.

And sure enough, the
Border Patrol does say that illegal border crossings are up, way up,
and hitting record
numbers, according to the Washington Post. The human tide has started.

Gallup's CEO does ask an
intelligent question in the wake of this new reality:

Most
U.S. citizens like me just want to know the plan. What is the 10-year plan? How
many, exactly whom and what skills will they bring? What do we want? Answer
these questions, and the current discussion can be resolved.

Keep
in mind that it's not only 330 million Americans who are wondering -- so are 42
million seekers from Latin America.

I can add that Latin America
isn't the only place where people are contemplating entering the U.S.
illegally. The African and Asian continents are also loaded with aspiring
illegal immigrants.

Democrats, of course are
never going to answer that question.

But it needs answering,
because the human waves are coming.

Gallup didn't ask Latin
Americans why they might be planning to come now in such great
numbers this year, but it's pretty obvious that one answer is that there is an
ongoing border wall debate, and the talk just keeps going.

So long as the U.S. is
enmired in Democrats' blockage of any funds for a border wall, yet the talk
goes on of building, the message to illegal migrants is to move. Get in before
the wall gets built while the Democrats are still arguing. This is the window.
Don't wait for the border wall to get built. Get in under the wire.

That very dynamic is a good argument
for why President Trump should just skip the shenanigans with the Democrats,
declare an emergency, and build the wall. The longer this drags on the
more the human waves are going to build. And as Gallup reports, we're looking
at a tsunami.

CALIFORNIA'S POPULATION
TO DOUBLE from ILLEGALS along with their CRIME RATES!

Times Staff Writers

July 10, 2007

Over the next
half-century, California's population will explode by nearly 75%, and Riverside
will surpass its bigger neighbors to become the second most populous county
after Los Angeles, according to state Department of Finance projections
released Monday. California will near the 60-million mark in 2050, the study
found, raising questions about how the state will look and function and where all
the people and their cars will go. Dueling visions pit the iconic California
building block of ranch house, big yard and two-car garage against more dense,
high-rise development. But whether sprawl or skyscrapers win the day, the
Golden State will probably be a far different and more complex place than it is
today, as people live longer and Latinos become the dominant ethnic group,
eclipsing all others combined. Some critics forecast disaster if gridlock and
environmental impacts are not averted. Others see a possible economic boon,
particularly for retailers and service industries with an eye on the state as a
burgeoning market. "It's opportunity with baggage," said Jack Kyser,
chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., in
"a country masquerading as a state. "Other demographers argue that
the huge population increase the state predicts will occur only if officials
complete major improvements to roads and other public infrastructure. Without
that investment, they say, some Californians would flee the state. If the
finance department's calculations hold, California's population will rise from
34.1 million in 2000 to 59.5 million at the mid-century point, about the same
number of people as Italy has today. And its projected growth rate in those 50
years will outstrip the national rate — nearly 75% compared with less than 50%
projected by the federal government. That could translate to increased
political clout in Washington, D.C. Southern California's population is
projected to grow at a rate of more than 60%, according to the new state
figures, reaching 31.6 million by mid-century. That's an increase of 12.1
million over just seven counties. L.A. County alone will top 13 million by
2050, an increase of almost 3.5 million residents. And Riverside County — long
among the fastest-growing in the state — will triple in population to 4.7
million by mid-century. Riverside County will add 3.1 million people, according
to the new state figures, eclipsing Orange and San Diego to become the second
most populous in the state. With less expensive housing than the coast,
Riverside County has grown by more than 472,000 residents since 2000, according
to state estimates. No matter how much local governments build in the way of
public works and how many new jobs are attracted to the region — minimizing the
need for long commutes — Housing figures that growth will still overwhelm the
area's roads. USC Professor Genevieve Giuliano, an expert on land use and
transportation, would probably agree. Such massive growth, if it occurs, she
said, will require huge investment in the state's highways, schools, and energy
and sewer systems at a "very formidable cost."If those things aren't
built, Giuliano questioned whether the projected population increases will occur.
"Sooner or later, the region will not be competitive and the growth is not
going to happen," she said.If major problems like traffic congestion and
housing costs aren't addressed, Giuliano warned, the middle class is going to
exit California, leaving behind very high-income and very low-income residents.
"It's a political question," said Martin Wachs, a transportation
expert at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. "Do we have the will, the
consensus, the willingness to pay? If we did, I think we could manage the
growth. "The numbers released Monday underscore most demographers' view
that the state's population is pushing east, from both Los Angeles and the Bay
Area, to counties such as Riverside and San Bernardino as well as half a dozen
or so smaller Central Valley counties. Sutter County, for example, is expected
to be the fastest-growing on a percentage basis between 2000 and 2050, jumping
255% to a population of 282,894 , the state said. Kern County is expected to
see its population more than triple to 2.1 million by mid-century. In Southern
California, San Diego County is projected to grow by almost 1.7 million
residents and Orange County by 1.1 million. Even Ventura County — where voters
have imposed some limits on urban sprawl — will see its population jump 62% to
more than 1.2 million if the projections hold. The Department of Finance
releases long-term population projections every three years. Between the last
two reports, number crunchers have taken a more detailed look at California's
statistics and taken into account the likelihood that people will live longer,
said chief demographer Mary Heim. The result? The latest numbers figure the
state will be much more crowded than earlier estimates (by nearly 5 million)
and that it will take a bit longer than previously thought for Latinos to
become the majority of California's population: 2042, not 2038. The figures
show that the majority

of California's growth
will be in the Latino population, said

Dowell Myers, a professor
of urban planning and demography

at USC, adding that
"68% of the growth this decade will be

Latino, 75% next and 80%
after that."That should be a wake-up call for voting Californians, Myers
said, pointing out a critical disparity. Though the state's growth is young and
Latino, the majority of voters will be older and white — at least for the next
decade." The future of the state is Latino growth," Myers said.
"We'd sure better invest in them and get them up to speed. Older white
voters don't see it that way. They don't realize that someone has to replace
them in the work force, pay for their benefits and buy their house."

California
Wants to Secede? Let's Help Them!

California is a part of America. But it’s
no longer American. It is a foreign state. It is a fugitive state. The U.S.
Constitution and the rule of law no longer apply in California. Call it, “The
People’s Socialist Republic of California.” It’s a state without a country. But
it’s certainly no longer American in any way.

Liberals in California want to secede.
They are trying to put it on the ballot. They call it “Calexit.” I say, “Glory
Hallelujah." Let’s help make it happen. I propose 63 million Trump
voters join the team. Let's work 24/7 to turn their dream into a reality!

Millions of illegal aliens live in
California; drive in California with official state-issued drivers’ licenses;
and of course, use those licenses to vote in California. Millions. That’s
precisely how Hillary won California by over 4 million votes.

California supports illegal aliens over
legal, law-abiding American citizens. They support illegals getting free
college tuition, while children of native-born Americans pay full fare. They
support illegals over police and ICE. Many liberals in California want to
abolish ICE. They want no borders and no immigration law.

The Attorney General of California has
warned any business owner who cooperates with ICE will face prosecution by the
state of California. You heard correctly. California will put the
business owner in prison, for cooperating with federal law, to protect the
criminal breaking the law.

The Mayor of Oakland famously played Paul
Revere to warn illegal felons “ICE is coming. ICE is coming.” The Feds report
over 800 felons evaded arrest because of that stunt. How many legal,
law-abiding, native-born Americans will be robbed, raped, or murdered in the
coming weeks because of that act of sedition?

A California judge just sided with the
ACLU and barred LA County from enforcing gang restrictions that dramatically
lowered crime. California has once again sided with hoodlums and gang-bangers
over the law-abiding taxpayers.

In Oakland, a coffee shop prohibits
employees from serving police, in order to create a “safe space” for their
customers. Californians hate and distrust police more than illegal felons and
thugs who speak no English and wear gang tattoos. Really.

All of this is sheer madness. But
California has taken it to a whole new level.

Just this week the California Senate
appointed the first-ever illegal alien to an official statewide post. Lizbeth
Mateo, a 33-year old illegal alien-turned-attorney, will serve on the official
state committee that doles out money to illegals attending college. In California,
illegals now decide how taxpayer money is spent.

President Trump loves to brand (see
"Crooked Hillary"). Let’s brand California. It’s not a “Sanctuary
State.” It’s a “Fugitive State.” It’s a place that chooses to let felons and
fugitives run free. It’s a place where the rights of criminals are far more
important than protecting legal, law-abiding American citizens who pay taxes.
We are the second class citizens in California.

Here’s the way to fix the problem. Liberal
Californians want to secede. I'm joining the movement. How about you?

Conservatives should beg California to
secede. We should make it easy for them. We should help pay for it. Pass the
hat. Every conservative should chip in $20. I’ll throw $1000 to get the ball
rolling.

Just think of elections. Without
California, Trump and all future Republican presidential candidates would win,
without breaking a sweat. Without California, we’d easily win the popular vote.
And we'd win the electoral vote by a landslide.

Next think of Congress. California has 53
House seats. Democrats lead 39-14, for a net gain of 25 seats. Send California
packing and the GOP gains a 25 House seat lead. We would dominate the House for
decades to come.

And of course, the GOP would gain an
automatic two seats in the Senate through the subtraction of California. As it
stands now, those two U.S. Senate seats are deep blue Democrat forever. But if
California secedes a 51-49 GOP lead instantly moves to 51-47.

If 63 million Trump voters just gave an
average of $20 each to the "Calexit movement" that’s over $1.2
billion dollars. That’s enough money to help California secede, with enough
left over as a down payment on building a wall…

with California.

Gavin Newsom’s First Act as California Governor: More Healthcare
for Illegal Aliens

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s first act in office was to propose
extending state healthcare benefits to more illegal aliens.

On
Tuesday, shortly after being sworn in, Newsom — who ran on the proposal of
providing healthcare to everyone in California, though he struggled to explain how he
would pay for it — signed an executive order taking steps in that direction.

In
his first executive order, Newsom directed the state to
create a single government purchaser for prescription drugs to increase
negotiating leverage with pharmaceutical companies. Alongside the order,
Newsom proposed extending
Medi-Cal — the state’s version of Medicaid — to illegal aliens up to the age of
26, rather than 19.

The governor’s forthcoming budget,
his office said, “will make California the first state in the nation to cover
young undocumented adults through a state Medicaid program.”

That
would cover 138,000 “young people in the country illegally,” according to the Associated Press.

“Undocumented young adults should
not have to worry about losing their health coverage when they turn 19,” the
governor’s office added, saying that the budget proposals, to be presented
later this week, would defend Obamacare from “recent federal attacks” and
“bring the state closer toward the goal of health care for all.”

In his inaugural address, Newsom
promised “sanctuary to all who seek it” — a reference to California’s status as
a “sanctuary state” for illegal aliens that refuses to help enforce federal
immigration law.

That policy continues to be a
lightning rod for national criticism after the murder last month of Corporal
Ronil Singh, a legal immigrant and police officer who was allegedly shot and
killed by an illegal alien during a traffic stop.

In addition, Newsom’s new budget
“proposes increasing the size of the subsidies for families who already receive
it, and it would make California the first state to make subsidies available to
middle income families,” his office said.
To pay for the expansion of those benefits, Newsom is proposing that California
restore the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, which was canceled
by President Donald Trump at the federal level.

Schumer
also sent a letter to President Trump and to congressional leaders asking for
legislative changes that he argues would make it easier for states, including
California, to develop a single-payer healthcare system.

HALF THE MURDERS IN MEXIFORNIA ARE NOW BY MEX GANGS-MORE THAN 90% OF THE MURDERS IN MEXICO’S SECOND LARGEST CITY ARE BY
MEXICANS!

Sheriff David Clarke (Ret.)

Enabling Criminal Aliens

The murder of Newman California
Police Corporal Ronil Singh allegedly by an illegal alien with a criminal past
is the latest high-profile killing of an American citizen that contains nearly
every element in our illegal immigration discourse.

Singh,
33, legally immigrated to the United States, became a U.S. citizen, and then
became one of Newman’s finest citizens serving as a police officer for twelve
years. Singh’s legal entry into the U.S. added value to our country. Sadly,
this husband and father of a 5-month-old son was allegedly murdered by an
illegal criminal alien gang member on Christmas Eve.

This
tragedy was preventable.

Singh’s
suspected murderer had “prior criminal activity that should have been reported
to ICE,” Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson had said. “Law enforcement
was prohibited because of sanctuary laws and that led to the encounter with
(Cpl.) Singh… the outcome could have been different if law enforcement wasn’t
restricted or had their hands tied because of political interference.”

California
is a state that provides a safe harbor for people illegally in the country.
California boasts its status as a sanctuary state in violation of federal law
and the supremacy clause in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. California
cities have passed laws prohibiting local law enforcement agencies from
cooperating with law enforcement officers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) with the apprehension of illegal immigrants even after they
have committed a crime. Many of these illegal criminals continue on to murder,
rape and rob U.S. citizens post-release from a local jail under the
catch-and-release policies before notifying ICE officials.

Currently,
the threshold for immediate deportation proceedings is set too low.
Catch-and-release instead of being detained pending an immigration hearing is
like unleashing a dangerous animal into a public space. Eventually, we’ll be
dealing with an avoidable catastrophe.

Typically
the definition to detain involves only crimes such as murder, rape, and armed
robbery. That’s about it. Serious drug dealing or gun possessions are not
considered crimes of violence under this strict definition. Neither does
burglary or the severe crime of driving under the influence of alcohol. As we
have seen over and over through the cost of American lives, many additional
crimes pose equally great risks to our communities should these illegal
criminal aliens be released without detaining for ICE.

Burglary
is a felony and as far as I am concerned a crime of violence. It’s not merely a
property crime that results in minor victimization. It involves forced entry.
It is a category Part I crime by FBI statistics. Part I crimes are serious
felonies. Anybody whose home has been broken into suffers a traumatic mental
experience. I have seen it when investigating burglaries. People who once felt
safe in their homes lose that sense of security after their home is
burglarized. Their kids have nightmares; adults sleep with one eye open and
every little noise in the house startles them. It takes a long time to heal.
Burglary costs Americans an estimated 4 billion in property loss every year,
but this does not include the psychological damage. The fact that many states
allow residents to use deadly force to stop intruders means that a burglary
could end violently for the intruder. It will if it happens at my home and I am
there.

Another
offense that is marginalized by sympathetic lawmakers is driving under the
influence. It is not merely a traffic offense. Tens of thousands of people are
killed and maimed by impaired drivers every year. I have arrived on the scene
of crashes involving impaired drivers. Seeing lifeless and mutilated bodies is
not pretty. This is why most states take it so seriously that a first offense
is a crime punishable by imprisonment. Many make a second and third offense a
felony. It’s worth mentioning that the illegal alien who allegedly murdered
Cpl. Singh had two prior arrests for DUI and was being stopped by Cpl. Singh
for suspected driving under the influence again.

A
recent Pew Research study on crimes committed by illegal aliens indicates it’s
time to take this seriously. The study shows that
the bulk of those arrested in 2016 and 2017 had prior criminal convictions. It
indicates that in 2017 illegal immigrants with past criminal convictions
accounted for 74% of all arrests made by ICE which is a 30% increase from the
year before.The study points out that those with no previous conviction
increased by 146% compared to a 12% increase of those with a past criminal
conviction. They have demonstrated a propensity to victimize. This conviction
rate includes nearly 60,000 arrested for drunk driving and approximately 58,000
arrested for dangerous drug dealing (opioids). The other classification of
convictions are as follows:

Assaults:
48,454

Larceny:
20,356

General
Crimes: 17,325

Obstructing
Police: 14,616

Burglary:
12,836

These
numbers are not insignificant. Nobody takes the time to point out to the
criminal alien apologists that the cost associated with these crimes include
police and court costs, incarceration costs, property loss and damage, medical
costs, psychological trauma, lost work time and increased insurance rates
adding up to billions of dollars. Therefore, the policy on when to deport and
for what reasons also needs to reflect these costs to the American people. The
time to deport is before they go on to serious offenses, not after.

Redefining
what constitutes deporting a criminal alien is needed. By changing the
definition from what is considered a ‘violent act’ to a ‘serious act’ would be
more inclusive of the dangerous crimes I have highlighted in this article. Our
laws need to reflect the protection of the American people not sympathy for
criminal aliens.

Is
it not asking too much for people in the country illegally to obey all of our
laws, not just a select few? Neither you nor I would be granted this courtesy
if we were even lawfully in a foreign country with a valid passport and
committed a misdemeanor crime not involving violence. Deportation would be
certain and swift with no release pending a deportation hearing.

It
is time for U.S. policy to change. The American people should not have to
accept such great risks when they don’t have to. They should not have to stand
by idly before a criminal illegal alien victimizes another American citizen.

It
is bad enough that our criminal justice system is soft on crime when it comes
to people legally in the country but when that same leniency is granted to
criminal aliens it’s a problem, and it’s time to recalculate our generosity.

The
position of most politicians in Washington D.C., except for a few Democrats who
are sympathetic to all illegal migrants, is that concerning deportations we
should deal with the criminal aliens first. An overwhelming majority of
Americans agree. Nobody wants to be victimized by a criminal, nonetheless, ones
who should have been deported.

When
we water down the standard for what is criminal behavior, we are heading toward
a very dark place. Crime is crime. Period. This should be the standard for
automatic deportation for criminal aliens.

Once
we get the criminal illegals out, a wall is required to prevent these thugs
from running back in and continuing to victimize Americans like Cpl. Singh who
hours before his death stopped home to visit his family on Christmas Eve,
kissing his wife and child for the last time. The picture of him with his
family taken just hours before his death should serve as a grave reminder to
all who want to hug a criminal illegal alien that at any moment they can lash
out and kill an American, and that it could have been avoided if Congress had
its priorities straight and put politics aside to do what’s right.

NY Times: ’40-Year’ Flood of Immigration Turns Orange County
Blue

The New York
Times admits a “40-year rise in the number of
immigrants” living in Orange County, California has transformed the region from
a “fortress of conservative Republicanism” to a Democrat electoral sweep.

The Times notes in a piece titled “In Orange County, a Republican Fortress Turns Democratic” that the
rapid demographic changes of the county — which now has a more than 30 percent foreign-born population —
has swiftly handed the region over to Democrats.

Breitbart News reported that
Orange County’s booming foreign-born populations of mostly Asian immigrants and
migrants from Central America coincided with Democrats sweeping the midterm
elections in an area that gave birth to President Richard Nixon.

The Times now acknowledges the
demographic changes are at least partially responsible for the diminishing
Republican representation in Orange County:

There was a steady decrease in white voters in the seven
congressional districts that are in and around Orange County between 1980 and
2017, according to census data. In
1980, whites made up 75 percent of the population in the district where Mr.
Cisneros won. By 2017, that number dropped to 30 percent.
[Emphasis added]

The county’s immigrant population grew five times as fast as the
general population between 1980 and 2000, and while the pace of
immigration has slowed, the
Latino and Asian populations continues to increase, driven by
the children of immigrant families born in the United States. [Emphasis added]

…

“You went from a solid Republican county to one in which
Republicans were just barely the majority, and it
fell pretty quickly in the past two years,” said Ms. Godwin. “You have had continued demographic changes.
This is a county that went from majority-white to having a majority that are
Latino and Asian-American.So that has gone hand-in-hand — particularly
with the rising Asian-American population — to voting more Democratic.” [Emphasis
added]

In a series of charts, Times reporters Robert
Gebeloff and Jasmine C. Lee. reveal that while Orange County has become less
and less Republican, the foreign-born population has grown significantly, the
share of college graduates has peaked, and the white American population
has fallen drastically.

California’s
46th District, already a Democrat-held congressional seat, has a foreign-born
population that is now reaching 40 percent with four-out-of-ten residents being born
outside the United States.

The other Democrat-held congressional
seat in Orange County, California’s 47th District, has a foreign-born
population of nearly 30 percent.

Three of Orange County’s four
Republican districts that have flipped to Democrat have foreign-born
populations that make up 25 percent or more of the region. For example,
California’s 39th District — where Democrat Gil Cisneros won over Republican
Young Kim — has a 34.1 percent foreign-born population.

In the 45th District, where Rep.
Mimi Walters (R-CA) has conceded to Democrat Katie Porter, the foreign-born
population makes up nearly 30 percent of the district.

Similarly, in the state’s 48th
District, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) — the former speechwriter to
President Ronald Reagan — lost to Democrat Harley Rouda after serving in the
seat since 2013. That district’s foreign-born population is now near 25
percent.

Even
in the 49th District, where the foreign-born population remains below 20
percent, Democrat Mike Levin beat out Republican Diane Harkey. The
district has anywhere between an 18 to 19 percent foreign-born population with
about 55 percent of foreign-born residents arriving from Latin America and nearly 30 percent coming from Asia.

Democrats
have increasingly swept congressional
districts whose demographics have been quickly changed due to the country’s
policy of mass legal and illegal immigration.

The process known as “chain
migration,” for instance — whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an
unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. with them — has imported more
than nine million foreign nationals since 2005.

As Breitbart
News reported, if chain
migration is not ended — as President Donald Trump has demanded — the U.S.
electorate will forever be changed, with between seven to eight million new
foreign-born individuals being eligible to vote because of chain migration, and
overall, an additional 15 million new foreign-born voters.

John Binder is a
reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

Congress’s toleration
of the nation’s catch-and-release rules is responsible for the migration
crisis, outgoing Chief of Staff John Kelly told the Los Angeles Times.

He blamed immigrants and lawmakers,
not the White House, for the tense situation at the border, where thousands of
Central Americans are stranded in Mexico — and two Guatemalan children have
died in Border Patrol custody in Texas and New Mexico this month.

“One of the reasons why it’s so
difficult to keep people from coming — obviously it’d be preferable for them to
stay in their own homeland but it’s difficult to do sometimes, where they live
— is a crazy, oftentimes conflicting series of loopholes in the law in the
United States that makes it extremely hard to turn people around and send them
home,” Kelly said.

“If we don’t fix the laws, then they
will keep coming,” he continued. “They have known, and they do know, that if
they can get here, they can, generally speaking, stay.”

The L.A. Times report — like many other outlets —
buried Kelly’s condemnation of the House and Senate leaders’ passive support
for the many catch-and-release laws and rules which allow the cartels to
profitably smuggle workers up to many eager employers in the United States.

The L.A. Times submerged Kelly’s judgment under
46 paragraphs and numerous slams on President Donald Trump, including the
claim that Trump’s effort to enforce border law is a “harsh immigration”
measure.

Kelly’s charge is being hidden even
as Democrats and establishment media outlets praise him for using his
power to muffle Trump’s pro-American policies, including his preference for a
lower level of overseas military activity.

The newspaper also tried to smear
Trump’s border defense push as a campaign scare while also admitting that
migration is rising amid congressional passivity:

Asked if there is a security crisis
at the Southern border, or whether Trump has drummed up fears of a migrant
“invasion” for political reasons, Kelly did not answer directly, but said, “We
do have an immigration problem.”

From the 1980s to the mid-2000s,
apprehensions at the border — the most common measure of illegal immigration —
routinely reached more than 1 millionmigrants a year.

Today, they are near historical
lows. In the fiscal year that ended in September, border authorities apprehended 521,090 people.

Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s
economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth
from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap
white collar and blue collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values
by cutting salaries for manual and
skilled labor of blue collar and white collar employees.

The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax
burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech
careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their
families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

When
talking about immigration, Democrats like to conflate illegal and legal
immigration, dropping the word “illegal” and spouting meaningless babble about
no human being illegal. They like to preach that illegal immigrants
commit crimes at a lower rate than American citizens, a
factoid that has been exposed as a lie.

The
murder of legal immigrant and Newman
Police Corporal Ronil Singh on Christmas night by an
illegal alien in the sanctuary state of California shows not only that the
claims by Chuck Schumer and the “bride of Chucky” Nancy Pelosi that the
Democrats support border security is a deadly and bald-faced lie. It highlights
the difference between legal and illegal immigrants, between those who love
America and want to be Americans and those who murder them.

Ronil
Singh came to the U.S. from his native Fiji to fulfill a lifelong dream of
becoming an officer, joining a small-town police force in California and
working to improve his English. The day after Christmas, he stopped another
immigrant, this one in the country illegally, who shot and killed the corporal,
authorities said Thursday…

"This
suspect is in our country illegally. He doesn't belong here. He is a
criminal," Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson, whose agency is
leading the investigation, told reporters.

Newman
Police Chief Randy Richardson fought back tears as he described Singh, a
33-year-old with a newborn son, as an "American patriot."

"He
came to America with one purpose, and that was to serve this country,"
Richardson said…

"He
was living the American dream," said Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy
Royjinder Singh, who is not related to the slain officer but knew him. "He
loved camping, loved hunting, loved fishing, loved his family."

And
now he is dead. The blood of Kate
Steinle, Mollie Tibbetts, and now Ronil Singh and others is
on the hands of open border advocates and the sanctuary city loons who provide
no sanctuary for the American citizen victims of illegal alien criminals.

Even
if it were true that illegal aliens commit crimes, including murder, at rates
lower than American citizens, that would be irrelevant. The murder rate for
illegal aliens should be zero because none of them should be here and the
indisputable fact is that Jamiel Shaw Jr., Kate Steinle, and Mollie Tibbetts
would be alive today if the illegal aliens who slew them were still staring at
the other side of a border wall liberals refuse to build.

And
Nancy Pelosi has a wall around the backyard at her home in San Francisco.

What
is immoral is a policy endorsed by Pelosi and Schumer of sanctuary cities and
even states that allows such criminal aliens in our country to murder Americans
and a Democratic caucus that would abolish I.C.E. and those who risk their
lives daily to provide some semblance of border security. What is immoral
is politicians such as Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf not only refusing
to cooperate with I.C.E. butgiving
illegal aliens a heads-up when I.C.E. raids are imminent.

In
the wake of the Singh murder, Schaaf still insists that warning illegal aliens
about I.C.E. raids was and is the right thing to do, the lives of American
citizens she is sworn to protect be damned:

Oakland
Mayor Libby Schaaf -- who once warned Northern California residents about an
impending ICE raid -- said she has “no regrets” for her actions and said the
federal immigration agency “has gone astray.”

“I
have no regrets, none. The more time goes by, the more certain I feel that I
did the right thing in standing up for our community and pointing out our
values are not aligned with our laws,” Schaff toldBuzzFeed
in an interview. “That’s hopefully the message that is
sent out.”

The
father of an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in U.S. custody took his son to
the border after hearing rumors that parents and their children would be
allowed to migrate to the United States and escape the poverty in their
homeland, the boy's stepsister told the Associated Press.

Felipe
Gomez Alonzo died Monday at a New Mexico hospital after suffering coughing,
vomiting and fever, authorities said. It was the second such death this month.
Another Guatemalan child, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal, died in U.S. custody on Dec.
8.

The
fact is that if we had a wall, or whatever the hair-splitters want to call it,
both these children would be alive today. And it is American kids are dying
too, killed and murdered by illegal aliens who have no right to be here. Just
ask the parents of Justin Lee, 14, who
was killed in a hit-and-run accident by an illegal alien:

An
illegal immigrant has pleaded guilty to a hit and run that killed a Wixom teen
in June.

Miguel
Ibarra-Cerda, 22, entered his plea Thursday, the day his trial was set to begin
before Judge Cheryl Matthews in Oakland County Circuit Court.

Ibarra-Cerda
is charged with failing to stop at the scene of an accident when at fault,
resulting in death, and reckless driving causing death for the collision which
killed Justin Lee, 14. Ibarra-Cerda faces up to 15 years in prison and a
$10,000 fine for the first charge and 15 years in prison and a $2,500-$10,000
fine on the second charge. Matthews will sentence him Dec. 20.

Police
in Connecticut have arrested an 18-year-old undocumented immigrant from Jamaica
on murder charges related to the shooting death of an innocent 12-year-old boy
a week before Christmas.

Bridgeport
Police Chief Armando Perez on Monday announced the charges against Tajay
Chambers stemming from the December 18 death of Clinton Howell outside his
family's home on Willow Street.

Chambers
has been charged with murder; murder with special circumstances; use of a
firearm during the commission of a felony; illegal possession of a firearm
without a permit; risk of injury to a child; reckless endangerment, and
larceny….

CTpost.com reported,
citing police sources, that earlier that evening, Chambers and his alleged
co-conspirators were driving in a stolen car when they got into an argument
with some people walking along Willow Street, among them Howell’s relative.

The
wall would in fact pay for itself, if only in the reduced cost of crimes that
would be eliminated, saving both dollars from overburdened social services and
the cost of illegal alien crimes, particularly the cost in human lives such as
that of Ronil Singh, who is survived by his wife and young son.

His
death, the death of a legal immigrant pursuing the American dream, and
countless other American citizens, including children, is on the hands of Nancy
Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Perhaps Pelosi can attend Singh’s funeral and explain
how his death and the deaths of others in the absence of a wall is all
President Trump’s fault and that not building the wall is the moral thing to
do.

Daniel John Sobieski is a
freelance writer whose pieces have appeared inInvestor’s
Business Daily, Human
Events, Reason Magazine and the ChicagoSun-Times among other
publications.

Caught Again: Dangerous Gang Member Deported 10 Times Since 1993
Arrested in Tucson

The
United States Customs and Border Protection agency arrested a dangerous illegal
alien and member of the notorious "18th Street Gang" in Arizona on
Tuesday evening, according to a press release.

Arizona
CBP reports that "51-year-old Hector Gustavo Montoya, a member of the
dangerous 18th Street gang in Los Angeles," was apprehended this week near
Nogales while agents were patrolling the border. Montoya has been arrested by
American authorities on numerous occasions, "most recently in 2016 when he
was convicted for drug smuggling offenses. He served a 24-month prison sentence
for that conviction and was removed from the country after confinement."

Montoya
has an illustrious history with repeated illegal entry into the country. In
what some politicians may describe as "an act of love,"
the 18th street gang member has been deported from America "more than 10
times for immigration violations dating back to 1993, as well as multiple
arrests for crimes committed in California." Montoya hails from Honduras
and will be held in custody by federal authorities.

CBP
has previously dealt with 18th Street gang members who use America's porous southern border as a means of
gaining access into the country. During July 2018, CBP arrested a thug from
this group who entered into the country separately while posing as a migrant seeking
refuge with his child. That same week of that arrest, agents also caught
a Salvadoran national crossing the border who also belonged to the gang.

Montoya's
arrest comes as President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans continue to
demand funding for a border wall to impede the flow of violent illegal aliens.

In an extraordinary investigative piece on
how ballot-harvesting works by Steve Miller, published on Real Clear
Investigations, we learn an amazing amount of information about how
ballot-harvesting works and why it's so closely connected to election fraud,
skewing elections in directions they normally wouldn't go. Themust-read
piece is focused on how Texas is dealing
with the seedy issue, enforcing the law, prosecuting more
than twice as many cases of electoral fraud
as California, even hampered as Texas is by weak penalties for violators. But a
little detail stands out much deeper into the piece: Ballot-harvesting, which
is at the root of considerable fraud of all kinds, is a practice specifically
borrowed from Latin America, with a very
impressive Latino analyst, K.B. Forbes, who has
electoral experience in both countries, citing Mexico. Here's the passage:

The practice
has its roots in Latin America, said K.B. Forbes, a political consultant
and Hispanic activist who has served as an elections observer in Sonora,
Mexico. “In the Latin culture, they have colonias, which is ‘little colony,’
literally,” he said. “In these, they sometimes have the equivalent of a
precinct boss, and that’s how people move up. The [politiqueras] deliver the
vote and when the candidate moves in, the theory is that they get a good post
inside the government.”

That brings up California, where
ballot-harvesting is perfectly legal, and normal voters have to wonder how the
heck that happened. Ballot-harvesting has been a disaster for Republicans in
California, with all conservatives now shut out from any representation in once-red
Orange County. Most congressional elections there showed Republican candidates
in the lead on election night in the last midterm, but all of them flipped to
Democrats as the Democrat-led ballot-harvesting brought in votes and votes and
votes from supposed precincts, harvested by their political operatives, until
the result went the other way. (This by the way, didn't happen in districts
where Democrats held a small lead, nothing flipped in their cases and ballots
did not keep rolling in).

If ballot harvesting is a practice
imported from Mexican politics, what does that say about California politics,
whose legislators would embrace Mexican electoral practices over the U.S.
standard? As I mentioned earlier, Mexico has been called "a
perfect dicatorship" by none other than
Nobel Prize-winning literary lion Mario Vargas Llosa, owing to the continuous
power of the Mexican Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (or
P.R.I.), which up under a decade or two ago, had a hammerlock monopoly on
Mexican politics, winning every single election in what was then a one-party
state. That's a system so bad people emigrated illegally from that country to
get away from it. Now, the cultural practice is right there waiting for them in
California, albeit, virtually nowhere else.

And like the P.R.I.'s Mexican electoral
practice of ballot-harvesting, it's noteworthy that the ruling Democrats of
California also are famous for doling out the goodies to the loyal voters.
They've promised amazing things to California's illegal immigrant population,
with the latest thing free heath care. California's insurance commissioner, the
respected non-partisan Steve Poizner, was, conveniently, ballot-harvested out
of office after an election-night lead several days after midterm by utterly
leftist Democrat Ricardo Lara who openly declared his support and big plans for
free health care for illegals. He's tried it before in the legislator and now
he's going to do it this time through the executive. California's incoming
governor, of course, is all in for the goody-slinging. In Mexico, they used to
pass out bags of beans for votes. In California, the prizes are considerably
higher, and they go well beyond free health care. I've already noted the
weird similarities to how California is run, and P.R.I-style politics here.

Any wonder California is going way out of
its way to welcome illegal immigrants? "You're all welcome here," as
Gov. Jerry Brown famously said. California already hosts a quarter of the
nation's illegals, and with middle class families now moving out due to high
living costs and punitive taxation, the California P.R.I. likes new bodies
coming in who have a lot of needs, which keeps the congressional seats numerous
and the federal funds flowing.

It all makes a normal person wonder about
the weird closeness of California officials and their Mexican counterparts,
too. Newsom has already paid a visit to Mexico to discuss the caravan with the
Mexican government in Mexico City (not Tijuana, where he would have gotten a
earful from the generally conservative and more dissident-oriented Tijuana
locals), and he has declared he plans to withdraw National Guard troops from
the U.S. border. With his party now embracing the P.R.I's style of governance
and having some unnaturally close ties to Mexican officials (I've seen it
myself at Los Angeles functions as a guest of the Mexican government), it looks
like a growing merger of Mexican and California politics.

Mexico knows how bad the system is, and
its citizens did rebel against it with a Trump-like leftist president, Andres
Manuel Lopez-Obrador, who won on a vow to end corruption. One can safely take
that as a sign that Mexicans are trying to move away from that kind of
politics, which of course would include ballot harvesting. California, on the
other hand, is moving toward it, embracing what Mexico is trying to reject.
That speaks pretty poorly for the sorry state of affairs in California. It's
only great for the rulers and those they patronize, until the money runs out.

Until then, clarification about
California's Mexico borrowings need to stand as an incentive to other states
about what not to do.

CALIFORNIA ICE CAPADES

Crackdown
on sheriffs, comfort for criminal illegals.

In California’s capital, sheriff Scott
Jones has been under fire for allegedly resisting oversight. This week the
Sacramento County sheriff revealed the real reason for the campaign against
him.

“It’s no secret,” he told county supervisors, “I give ICE unfettered access to our jails and our databases.” That was a problem because county
supervisors voted in July to cancel the sheriff’s contract with ICE, and it
also raised issues of compliance with Senate Bill 54, the state’s sanctuary law

Least-Educated
State: California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never
Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School Graduates

(CNSNews.com) - California ranks
No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who
have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have graduated
from high school, according
to new data from the Census Bureau.

Texas ranks No. 2 for the
percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade
and 49th for the percentage who have graduated from high school.

9.7 percent of California
residents 25 and older, the
Census Bureau says, never completed ninth grade.
Only 82.5 percent graduated from high school.

California
and Texas—while having the highest percentages of residents 25 and older who
never finished ninth grade and the lowest percentages who graduated from high
school—are the nation’s two most populous states.

Massachusetts
ranks No. 1 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older—42.1 percent--who
have earned at least a bachelor’s degree.

These
rankings are based on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey
5-year estimates, which were released this month.

In
the survey, the
Census Bureau asks respondents to specify the level of educational attainment for each
individual in their household. The question is: “What is the highest degree or
level of school this person has COMPLETED. Mark (X) ONE box. If currently
enrolled, mark the previous grade or highest degree received.”

The
survey form then offers the respondent multiple options ranging from “no
schooling completed” to “professional degree” or “doctorate degree.” If an
individual has not earned a high school degree, the respondent is asked to
specify the highest grade the individual actually completed—ranging from
“nursery school” through “12th grade—NO DIPLOMA.”

The
Census Bureau’s American Community Survey queries a random sample of more than
3.5 million U.S. households each year and publishes a one-year estimate for each
year. The five-year estimate, the bureau says, “is a weighted average of the
five one-year estimates.” The newly released five-year estimates are for the
period from 2013 through 2017.

Nationwide,
5.4 percent of residents 25 and older have never finished ninth grade,
according to the latest five-year estimates.

Nationwide,
30.9 percent of residents 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In
nineteen states, the percentage with a bachelor’s degree or higher exceeds the
national percentage. These nineteen states include both No. 14 California
(32.6) and No. 9 New York (35.3), which respectively ranked No.1 and No. 3 for
the percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade.

Another
2,033,160 California residents 25 and older completed the ninth, tenth,
eleventh or twelfth grade—but did not earn a high school diploma. Thus, a total
of 4,543,530 California residents 25 and older—or a nation-leading 17.5
percent--have never graduated from high school.

CALIFORNIA RUNNING OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S
MONEY TO TAX

To paraphrase a Thatcher paraphrase, socialism works until you run
out of other people's money. And then you start taxing Netflix and text
messages. On its way to bankruptcy, Chicago managed to do impose some ingenious
taxes. Now California is
following suit.

A California
regulator's plan to tax texts in order to fund cellphones for the poor hit a
snag Wednesday after a Federal Communications Commission ruled text messages
aren't subject to the utility agency's authority.

The decision by
the FCC, which categorized text messages as "information services" on
par with emails and not "telecommunications services," came in an
effort to combat robo-texts and spam messages. The California Public Utilities
Commission now faces an uphill battle ahead of a scheduled vote on the
measure next month.

Those opposed to the
planned tax hailed the FCC decision a victory.

“We hope that the CPUC
recognizes that taxing text messages is bad for consumers,” Jamie Hastings, senior
vice president of external and state affairs for CTIA, which represents the
U.S. wireless communications industry, told The Mercury News. “Taxing this
service would burden those who rely on and use this service each and every
day.”

To quote the Beatles, "If you drive a car, I'll tax the
street, If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat. If you get too cold
I'll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet."

Study: More than 7-in-10 California Immigrant Households Are on
Welfare

More than 7-in-10
households headed by immigrants in the state of California are on
taxpayer-funded welfare, a new study reveals.

The latest Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)
finds that about 72 percent of households headed by noncitizens and immigrants
use one or more forms of taxpayer-funded welfare programs in California — the
number one immigrant-receiving state in the U.S.

Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of
households headed by native-born Americans use welfare in California.

All four states with the largest
foreign-born populations, including California, have extremely high use of
welfare by immigrant households. In Texas, for example, nearly 70 percent of
households headed by immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare. Meanwhile, only
about 35 percent of native-born households in Texas are on welfare.

In New York and Florida, a majority
of households headed by immigrants and noncitizens are on welfare. Overall,
about 63 percent of immigrant households use welfare while only 35 percent of
native-born households use welfare.

President Trump’s administration is
looking to soon implement a policy that protects
American taxpayers’ dollars from funding the mass
importation of welfare-dependent foreign nationals by enforcing a “public
charge” rule whereby legal immigrants would be less likely to secure a
permanent residency in the U.S. if they have used any forms of welfare in the
past, including using Obamacare, food stamps, and public housing.

The immigration controls would be a
boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut — the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the
welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5
million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.

As Breitbart News reported, the majority of the more than
1.5 million foreign nationals entering the country every year use about 57 percent
more food stamps than the average native-born American
household. Overall, immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash
welfare than American citizen households and 44 percent more in Medicaid
dollars. This straining of public services by a booming 44 million foreign-born population
translates to the average immigrant household costing American taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on
Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

San Francisco: Now so bad,
it'll make you cry

Twentieth-century San Francisco, Herb Caen's beloved Baghdad by
the Bay, has ceased to exist. It has been replaced by a city where
the sidewalks around Market Street are, in places, caked in feces, urine, and
vomit. The stink as you emerge from the BART batters you like frozen
sleet, shocking and overwhelming. The
hordes of homeless, sprawled in doorways and sleeping on the sidewalks, are a
bitterly eclectic mixture of the mentally deranged; burnt out druggies;
dead-eyed hippies; con artists; pickpockets; and hundreds of simply lost,
forgotten souls.

I had occasion to visit downtown San Francisco this afternoon, the
first time in over seven years, though I reside only thirty miles away in the
East Bay suburbs. During my working life, I have commuted to San
Francisco as a bushy-tailed junior executive in the '70s, as a small
business-owner in the early '80s, and as a corporate executive in the
'90s. Thankfully, "Old" San Francisco really was a
wonderful place to work, eat, and play.

As I walked the three blocks back to the BART, I was panhandled
four times, plus two clumsy pickpocket attempts. I didn't see a
single cop in a car or on foot. What could they do?

What finally broke my heart were the kids and women, also lying in
the streets, drugged, shell-shocked, begging for food. I found an
ATM, took out some cash, and bought twenty five-dollar "Arch Cards"
from McDonald's and passed them out. The salty tears flowed gently
down my face and onto my lips. My soul, my humanity was abused,
sickened, and disgusted.

Today I observed a city that carefully and deliberately schemed to
become an open sewer. This is far beyond simple
incompetence. The magnitude and pervasiveness of this horror remains
indescribable. No rational, thinking person, or board, or mayor
could allow this societal abomination to continue unabated in a first-world
country.

Yet it does.

San Francisco willingly hosts a malignant cancer that has
metastasized and destroyed all aspects of a civilized, compassionate society.

While skyscrapers still fill the skyline, and tankers and giant
container ships still prowl the bay, the City-by-the-Bay soul has begun its
death rattle.

Its political leaders and
a credulous national media present California as the “woke” state, creating an
economically just, post-racial reality. Yet in terms of opportunity, California
is evolving into something more like apartheid South Africa or the pre-civil
rights South. California simply does not measure up in delivering educational
attainment, income growth, homeownership, and social mobility for traditionally
disadvantaged minorities. All this bodes ill for a state already three-fifths
non-white and trending further in that direction in the years ahead. In the
past decade, the state has added 1.8 million Latinos, who will account by 2060
for almost
half the
state’s population. The black population has plateaued, while the number of
white Californians is down some 700,000 over the past decade.

Minorities and immigrants
have brought much entrepreneurial energy and a powerful work ethic to
California. Yet, to a remarkable extent, their efforts have reaped only meager
returns during California’s recent boom. California, suggests gubernatorial
candidate and environmental activist Michael
Shellenberger,
is not “the most progressive state” but “the most racist” one. Chapman
University reports
that 28 percent of California’s blacks are impoverished, compared with 22
percent nationally. Fully one-third of
California Latinos—now the state’s largest ethnic group—live in poverty,
compared with 21 percent outside the state. Half of Latino
households earn under $50,000 annually, which, in a high-cost state, means that
they barely make enough to make ends meet. Over two-thirds of non-citizen
Latinos, the group most loudly defended by the state’s progressive leadership,
live at or below the poverty line, according to a recent United
Way study.

This stagnation reflects
the reality of the most recent California “miracle.” Historically, economic
growth extended throughout the state, and produced many high-paying blue-collar
jobs. In contrast, the post-2010 boom has been inordinately dependent on the
high valuations of a handful of tech firms and coastal real estate speculation.
Relatively few blacks or Latinos participate at the upper reaches of the tech
economy—and a recent
study suggests
that their percentages in that sector are declining—and generally lack the
family resources to compete in the real estate market. Instead, many are stuck
with rents they can’t afford.

Even as incomes soared in
the Silicon Valley and San Francisco after 2010, wages for African-Americans
and Latinos in the Bay Area declined. The shift of employment from industrial
to software industries,
as well as the extraordinary presence—as much as 40 percent—of noncitizens in
the tech industry, has meant fewer opportunities for assemblers and other
blue-collar workers. Many nonwhite Americans labor in the service sector
as security
guards or
janitors, making about $25,000 annually, working for contractors who offer no
job security and only limited benefits. In high-priced Silicon Valley, these
are essentially poverty wages. Some workers live in their cars, converted
garages, or even on the streets, largely ignored by California’s famously
enlightened oligarchs.

CityLab has described the
Bay Area as “a region of segregated innovation.” TheGiving Code, which reports on
charitable trends among the ultra-rich, found that between 2006 and 2013, 93
percent of all private foundation-giving in Silicon Valley went to causes
outside of Silicon Valley. Better to be a whale, or a distressed child in
Africa or Central America, than a worker living in his car outside Google
headquarters.

For generations,
California’s racial minorities, like their Caucasian counterparts, embraced the
notion of an American Dream that included owning a house. Unlike kids
from wealthy
families—primarily
white—who can afford elite educations and can sometimes purchase houses
with parental help, Latinos and blacks, usually without much in the way of
family resources, are increasingly priced out of the market. In
California, Hispanics and blacks face housing prices that are approximately
twice the national average, relative to income. Unsurprisingly,
African-American and Hispanic homeownership rates have dropped considerably
more than those of Asians and whites—four times the rate in the rest of the country.
California’s white homeownership rate remains above 62 percent, but just 42
percent of all Latino households, and only 33 percent of all black households,
own their own homes.

In contrast,
African-Americans do far better, in terms of income and homeownership, in
places like Dallas-Fort Worth or greater Houston than in socially enlightened
locales such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. Houston and Dallas boast black
homeownership rates of 40 to 50 percent; in deep blue but much costlier Los
Angeles and New York, the rate is about 10 percentage points lower.

Rather than achieving
upward class mobility, many minorities in California have fallen down the class
ladder. This can be seen in California’s overcrowding rate, the nation’s
second-worst. Of the 331 zip codes making up the top 1 percent of overcrowded
zip codes in the U.S., 134 are found in Southern California, primarily in
greater Los Angeles and San Diego, mostly concentrated around heavily Latino
areas such as Pico-Union, East Los Angeles, and Santa Ana, in Orange County.

The lack of affordable
housing and the disappearance of upward mobility could create a toxic racial
environment for California. By the 2030s, large swaths of the state,
particularly along the coast, could evolve into a geriatric belt, with an
affluent, older boomer population served by a largely minority service-worker
class. As white and Asian boomers age, California increasingly will have
to depend on children from
mainly poorer families with fewer educational resources, living in crowded and
even unsanitary conditions, often far from their place of employment, to
work for low wages.

Historically, education
has been the lever that gives minorities and the poor access to opportunity.
But in California, a state that often identifies itself as “smart,” the
educational system is deeply flawed, especially for minority populations. Once
a model of educational success, California now ranks 36th in the country in
educational performance, according to a 2018 Education
Weekreport.
The state does have a strong sector of “gold and silver” public schools, mostly
located in wealthy suburban locations such as Orange County, the interior East
Bay, and across the San Francisco Peninsula. But the performance of schools in
heavily minority, working-class areas is scandalously poor. The state’s
powerful teachers’ union and the Democratic legislature have added $31.2
billion since 2013 in new school funding, but California’s
poor students ranked
49th on National Assessment of Education Progress tests. In Silicon Valley,
half of local public school students, and barely one
in five blacks or Latinos, are proficient in basic math.

Clearly, California’s
progressive ideology and spending priorities are not serving minority students
well. High-poverty schools are so poorly run that disruptions from students and
administrative interruptions, according to a UCLA study, account for 30 minutes
a day of class time. Teachers in these schools often promote “progressive
values,” spending much of their time, according to one
writer,
“discussing community problems and societal inequities.” Other priorities
include transgender and other gender-relatededucation, from which parents,
in some school districts, cannot opt out. This ideological instruction is doing
little for minority youngsters. San Francisco, which the nonprofit journalism
site Calmatters refers to as “a
progressive enclave and beacon for technological innovation,” also had “the
lowest black student achievement of any county in California,” as well as the
highest gap between black and white scores.

Ultimately, any reversal
of this pattern must come from minorities demanding a restoration of
opportunity. Some now see the linkage between state policy and impoverishment,
which has led some 200 civil rights leaders to sue
the state Air Resources Board, the group that enforces the Greenhouse Gas
edicts of the state bureaucracy. But perhaps the ultimate wakeup call will come
from a slowing economy. After an extraordinary period of growth post-recession,
California’s economy is clearly weakening, as companies and people move
elsewhere. Texas and other states are now experiencing faster
GDP growth
than the Golden State. Perhaps more telling, the latest BEA numbers suggest
that California—which created barely
800 jobs last month—is
now experiencing far
lower income growth than
the national average, and scarcely half that of Texas, Colorado, Michigan,
Arizona, Missouri, or Florida. Out-migration of skilled and
younger workers, reacting to long commutes and high prices, seems to be accelerating, both in Southern
California and the Bay Area.

One has to wonder what
will happen when the California economy, burdened by regulations, high costs,
and taxes, slows even more. Generous welfare benefits, made possible by taxing
the rich, could be threatened; conversely, the Left might get traction by
pushing to raise taxes even higher. The pain will be relatively minor in Palo
Alto, Malibu, or Marin County, the habitations of the ruling gentry rich—but
for those Californians who have already been left behind, and for a diminishing
middle class, it might be just beginning.

Joel Kotkin serves as Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman
University and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (COU).

“New” and “underrepresented” voters could spell victory for leftist
Democrats in November.

Last week California’s Department of Motor Vehicles sent 23,000 “erroneous” voter
registrations to the office of
Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who maintains the list of registered voters.
The DMV blamed it technical errors and said none of the erroneous registrations
involved undocumented immigrants. Padilla was “extremely disappointed and
deeply frustrated” and the DMV assured him it wouldn’t happen again.

Legitimate voters have good reason to believe Padilla was not
disappointed but delighted. The odds are strong that illegals make up most if
not all of the newly registered voters. The registrations of illegals will be
happening again, in greater numbers, as the November election approaches.

The day after the 23,000 registrations made news, it emerged that
from late April to early August, the DMV registered 182,000 “new voters,” with the largest number, 112,000, choosing “no party.”
Neither the DMV nor Padilla would explain the numbers but the trend is evident
and all by design.

Under a 2015 voter registration law, the DMV automatically
registered to vote those who obtain or renew a California driver’s license.
As Padilla told the Los Angeles Times, “We’ve built the protocols and the firewalls to not register
people that aren’t eligible. We’re going to keep those firewalls in place.” The
Democrats’ Secretary of State did not explain how the firewalls worked and if
any ineligibles had managed to vote.

After the 2016 election in which Donald Trump defeated Hillary
Clinton, Padilla refused to release any voter information to a federal probe
that he claimed “has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted
illegally.” California’s participation,
Padilla said in a statement, “would only serve to legitimize the false and
already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the president.”

Governor Jerry Brown, who three times ran for president, calls
Californians “the citizens of the fifth largest economy in the world,” and the sanctuary state law protects even violent criminal
illegals. The ruling Democrats protect illegals while promising them “free”
health care and other benefits. In return, the illegals vote for Democrats.

“Palestinian-Mexican American” candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar, is
the grandson of Black September terrorist Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, who masterminded
the murder and mutilation of 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympics in 1972. The
Democrat, 29, is depending on “underrepresented voters,” to unseat Rep. Duncan Hunter in San Diego.

Legitimate voters have good reason to consider “underrepresented”
as code for “ineligible” or “illegal.” For their part, legal citizens and
immigrants might wonder how the Munichian candidate’s father managed to enter the United States and what the family was
doing in Gaza for several years. Ammar isn’t telling and establishment
journalists look the other way.

Senate boss Kevin de León, whose name on his birth certificate voter rolls is Kevin Alexander
Leon, claims his father is a Chinese cook
born in Guatemala. The author of the state’s sanctuary law spent time on both
sides of the border and “identifies strongly with Mexican culture.” The story
defies belief but as with Najjar the establishment media mounted no
investigation.

Back in 1996 in Orange County, 442 illegals voted for Loretta Sanchez, the Democrat who narrowly defeated Republican Robert Dornan.
He was the target of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional founder
Bert Corona, a violent Stalinist who opposed Dornan’s strong anti-Communist
stance.

Despite Democrat denials, voter fraud was going strong in California
long before the DMV registered more than one million false-documented illegals.
It’s a safe bet that most if not all those ineligibles will be showing up at
the polls in November.

The Once 'Golden State' Is Badly Tarnished

With crime soaring, rampant homelessness,
sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in
the country and its “worst
state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for
more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive
government is devolving into a third-world country. In cities such as San
Francisco, public defecation is legal, drug use is
flagrant, and tent cities are designated biohazards. In once pristine San
Diego, contractors have been spraying down
homeless encampments with household bleach to stave off a hepatitis A epidemic.
The so-called “Golden State,” which now has the highest poverty
rate in the nation, is tarnished beyond recognition with such
serious problems that the sublime climate and striking coastline may no longer
be enough to sustain its reputation and cachet. With laws that benefit
criminals and illegals, big government that endeavors to control every aspect
of residents’ lives from plastic bags to straws; sanctioned street, tent, and
vehicle dwelling; and an unaffordable overhyped bullet train boondoggle that
will cost taxpayers almost $100
billion, California is headed for economic
disaster.

Rising Crime

In the past few years, California has
instituted criminal justice reform legislation and initiatives, ostensibly to
reduce budget expenditures and prison overcrowding, which has led invariably to
the release of more criminals into the state’s population.

Proposition
47, a referendum passed in 2014,
reclassified certain drug possession felonies to misdemeanors and required
misdemeanor sentencing for theft when the amount involved is $950 or less.
Drug possession for personal use is now considered a misdemeanor.

Proposition
57, a statewide ballot proposition
passed in 2016, changed parole policies for those convicted of nonviolent
felonies. But the proposition failed to define “nonviolent crimes”. The
result was that those committing “nonviolent” crimes such as rape of an
unconscious or intoxicated person, assault of a police office, domestic
violence, hostage taking, drive-by shootings, and human trafficking of a
child became eligible for early parole based on a paper review in lieu of
a parole hearing.

Assembly
Bill 1448 and Assembly
Bill 1308 allow for the early release of
prisoners who are 60 years or older who have served at least 25 years of
their sentence and prisoners who committed crimes at least 25 years or
younger who have served at least 15 years, respectively. Both were signed
into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2017.

In
June this year, Gov. Brown signed into law AB
1810, that gives defendants a chance to
have their charges dismissed and evidence of their arrest erased from the
record if they can convince a judge that they suffer from a treatable
mental disorder. Such defendants could be offered a pretrial diversion of
two years to undergo mental health treatment.

As may have been expected with lenient
policies, violent crime and property crime rates in the state increased and
will mostly likely soar in the aftermath of some of the newly implemented
measures. An FBI study of crime rates from 2014 to 2015 found that 48 California
cities saw overall increases with 24 experiencing increases in the double
digits for property crime, an increase directly attributable to Prop. 47,
according to Marc Debbaudt, past president of the Association of Los Angeles
Deputy District Attorneys.

Homelessness

As of 2017, California
had a homeless population of over 134,000, or one quarter of the nation’s
homeless. UCLA researcherWilliam
Yu notedthat 26% of California’s homeless are
severely mentally ill, 18% are chronic drug abusers, 9% are veterans and 24%
are victims of domestic abuse. Orange County Supervisor, Tod
Spitzer attributes much of the problem to
legislation signed by Governor Jerry Brown over the past few years that
markedly decreased the penalties for drug use, possession, and petty crimes,
thereby reducing arrests and eliminating mandatory treatment for drug abuse and
mental health treatment.

Where other states have successfully
instituted welfare-to-work programs, California’s liberal government has resisted
pro-work reforms and retained a system of
cash disbursements with no strings attached. This has led to a state
bureaucracy that continues to grow and expand its budget, staffing, and client
base. Inordinately high housing prices, somewhat driven by restrictive land use
and environmental regulations, have exacerbated the problem.

Civil rights organizations such as the
ACLU have made the homelessness issue a difficult one to tackle. In 2003, the
ACLU filed
a lawsuit, Jones v. City of Los Angeles,
on behalf of homeless people who were ticketed and arrested for sleeping on public
sidewalks at night. In 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the
lawsuit by striking down the Los Angeles ordinance that made it a crime for
homeless people to sleep on the streets when no shelter is available. Not only
is it permissible to pitch a tent in many areas in the state but also vehicle
dwelling is allowed in Los Angeles
residential areas from 6:00 a.m. to 9 p.m. and in business and industrial areas
from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.

Illegal Immigration

California, a sanctuary
state, is home to at least 4 million illegal
immigrants and their children. National
Economics Editorial, a website that covers
economic issues, has estimated that those in the state illegally contribute
$3.5 billion in taxes while costing California approximately $30.3 billion
annually, or 17.7% of the state budget. According to the Migration
Policy Institute (MPI), more than half
are unskilled, uneducated, and lack English proficiency.

Services
to illegals include welfare, food stamps,
meal programs, free immunizations, low-cost housing and in-state tuition rates.
In addition, children of illegals make up 18% of the public-school population,
straining the already burdened school system by increasing student-to-teacher
ratios and by impeding the learning process with supplemental, English-language
instruction.

Unchecked illegal immigration comes with a
marked increase
in crime rates. Those who have broken the
law to come to the United States are overrepresented in murder charges, drug
trafficking, and gang violence. Increased policing, court, and incarceration
costs put additional strain on the justice syste. In 2014, the U.S.
Department of Justice and U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that illegal immigrants committed over 13% of all U.S.
crime, and a particularly high level of violent and drug-related crimes,
according to criminologist and law enforcement expert Ron Martinelli. A
substantial illegal immigrant population coupled with a policy signed by
Governor Jerry Brown in 2014 that protects criminal illegal immigrants by
reducing their sentences to fall below federal standards for deportation
further aggravates the problem. This, at a time when59%
of Californians want to increase deportations
of illegals.

In a measure that would add to costs and incentivize illegal entry,
California